Cartography, War Correspondence and News Publishing: the Early Career of Nicolaes Van Geelkercken, 1610–1630*

chapter 15 Cartography, War Correspondence and News Publishing: The Early Career of Nicolaes van Geelkercken, 1610–1630* Helmer Helmers In the first decades of the seventeenth century, Amsterdam quickly developed into the main centre of the European book trade.1 “The miracle of the world”, according to some, the growth was indeed remarkable. When Cornelis Claesz opened his shop in 1578, competition was insignificant. When he died, in 1609, thirty booksellers populated the city. In 1621, the number had grown to fifty.2 By the middle of the century, the book trade had expanded to such an extent that, according to the famous estimate by De la Fontaine-Verweij, about thirty per cent of all the books published in Europe were produced in the once insignificant backwater where Claesz had begun his career.3 And as they developed into both the staple market and the bookshop of the world, Amsterdam and the dense network of Dutch cities surrounding it also became the prime information hub of Europe, where continental, British, Atlantic and oriental networks met.4 * This article is part of my research programme Reporting the Thirty Years War in the Dutch Media, 1618–1648, which is financed by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (nwo). I thank Elmer Kolfin for commenting on a draft version of this article, and Kees Zandvliet for his suggestions at an earlier stage. 1 Paul Hoftijzer, ‘Metropolis of Print. The Amsterdam Book Trade in the Seventeenth Century’, in Urban Achievement in Early Modern Europe. Golden Ages in London, Antwerp, and Amsterdam, ed. Patrick O’Brian (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 249–63; Lotte Hellinga, ed., The Bookshop of the World. The Role of the Low Countries in the Book-trade, 1473–1941 (Utrecht: Hes & De Graff, 2001). 2 Claartje Rasterhoff, ‘Carrière en concurrentie in een culturele sector. De Amsterdamse boekhandel, 1580–1800’, De Zeventiende Eeuw, 27.2 (2011), pp. 162–79, at 162. 3 Herman de la Fontaine Verwey, ‘Het Hollandse wonder’, in Boeken in Nederland. Vijfhonderd jaar schrijven, drukken en uitgeven, ed. P.F.J. Obbema (Amsterdam: Koninklijk Verbond van Grafische Ondernemingen, 1979), pp. 46–64. 4 Siegfried Huigen and Jan de Jong, eds., The Dutch Trading Companies as Knowledge Networks (Leiden: Brill, 2010); Clé Lesger, Handel in Amsterdam ten tijde van de Opstand. Kooplieden, commerciële expansie en verandering in de ruimtelijke economie van de Nederlanden ca. 1550–ca. 1630 (Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren, 2001), pp. 209–49. © helmer helmers, ��6 | doi �0.��63/9789004�77�99_0�6 This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution- Noncommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 Unported (CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0) License. Helmer Helmers - 9789004277199 Downloaded from Brill.com09/23/2021 05:07:10PM via free access <UN> Cartography, War Correspondence and News Publishing 351 In this fertile, but extremely competitive environment, the careers of various prominent news publishers took shape. The Truce Period of 1609–21 was especially crucial for the development of a stable news market. Already before the armistice various booksellers moved to Amsterdam from exile elsewhere in Europe, and after 1609 others followed.5 Prominent news publishers to be, such as Claes Jansz Visscher, carved out their place in the market of topical print in this period.6 The Truce also brought fundamental changes to the kind of news that was published. In the preceding decades, Dutch news publishing had been dominated and structured by the war against Spain: major news houses, such as the Hogenberg firm in Cologne, had developed as part of the Orange war propaganda machine.7 Peace now threatened this war trade. The army correspondent Broer Jansz complained in 1609 that he had to “stay home because of the Treves” (i.e. the armistice between Spain and the United Provinces). Luckily for Jansz, growing tensions in Germany created new opportunities. He was delighted that the “brave preparations for battle” in Jülich allowed him to go the front again, and report war news to the undefined “mas- ters” whom he had served as an informer before.8 Throughout the Truce, the widening conflict in Germany provided Dutch newsmakers with an alterna- tive, steady supply of news, which was eagerly exploited. The temporary public sphere created by the Truce conflicts in the late 1610s would give another major boost to the market for topical print, leading to “a tidal wave of pamphlets” in 1616–19.9 But it was largely German news, often translated from German sources, that enabled newsmakers to engage in consistent news production, 5 For example Francois van der Hoeye (1610) and Crispijn van de Passe (1611). Cf. Rasterhoff, ‘Carrière en concurrentie’. 6 Nadine Orenstein, Huigen Leeflang, Ger Luijten and Christiaan Schuckman, ‘Print Publishers in the Netherlands 1580–1620’, in Dawn of the Golden Age. Northern Netherlandish Art 1580–1620, ed. Ger Luijten et al. (Zwolle: Rijksmuseum with Waanders publishing, 1993), pp. 167–200, at 194. 7 Christi Klinkert, Nassau in het Nieuws. Nieuwsprenten van Maurits van Nassau’s militaire ondernemingen uit de periode 1590–1600 (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2005). On the earlier Nassau propaganda, see e.g. René van Stipriaan, ‘Words at War. The Early Years of William of Orange’s Propaganda’, Journal of Early Modern History, 11.4–5 (2007), pp. 331–49. 8 Henk Borst, ‘Broer Jansz in Antwerpse ogen. De Amsterdamse Courantier na de slag bij Kallo in 1638 neergezet als propagandist’, De Zeventiende Eeuw, 25.1 (2009), pp. 55–89, at 79. 9 Craig E. Harline, Pamphlets, Printing, and Political Culture in the Early Dutch Republic (Dordrecht: Springer, 1987), p. 9. See also Roeland Harms, Pamfletten en publieke opinie. Massamedia in de zeventiende eeuw (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2011); Marika Keblusek, Boeken in de Hofstad. Haagse boekcultuur in de Gouden Eeuw (Hilversum: Uitgeverij Verloren, 1997), p. 38. Helmer Helmers - 9789004277199 Downloaded from Brill.com09/23/2021 05:07:10PM via free access <UN> 352 Helmers and which allowed Broer Jansz and Caspar van Hilten to establish their corantos in 1618/19.10 It is remarkable that we know relatively little about this formative period, when several publishers laid the foundations for famous publishing houses that would come to dominate the European news market. These were the people who actually made the Dutch news entrepôt, but their lists, their sources, their networks and their marketing strategies remain largely unstud- ied. Unlike newsmakers such as Abraham Verhoeven, Richard Verstegan, and Théophraste Renaudot, whose lives and work have been well studied, we know relatively little about their influential Dutch competitors or predecessors such as Jansz, Van Hilten, Visscher, and the many enterprising, but largely forgotten minor news publishers and authors who contributed to the Dutch news boom of the first decades of the seventeenth century.11 The main reason for this lacuna is the fact that scholarship on early seventeenth-century Dutch publishers has traditionally been fragmented along disciplinary lines that obscure our understanding of their businesses and careers.12 The early courantiers Broer Jansz, Caspar van Hilten and Jan Jansz sr. appear in histories and bibliographies of the newspaper not as the versatile all-rounders that they were, but as the publishers of the earliest Dutch newspapers only—as if their corantos appeared in a different universe from their non-periodical publications.13 Other publishers, such as Visscher and Johannes Janssonius have been studied predominantly for their most famous, and qualitatively superior work: news and art engravings in the case of the former, and maps in the case of the latter. Although these approaches have great value for the subject specialist, they are of limited use to the histo- rian of seventeenth-century news or print. The more recent trend to study news 10 Annie Stolp, De eerste couranten in Holland (Haarlem: J. Enschedé en zonen, 1938), p. 73. 11 On Renaudot, see Howard M. Solomon, Public Welfare, Science and Propaganda in Seventeenth Century France: The Innovations of Théophraste Renaudot (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), and Stéphane Haffemayer, L’information dans la France du XVIIe siècle: la Gazette de Renaudot de 1647 à 1663 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2002). On Verstegan, Paul Arblaster, Antwerp and the World. Richard Verstegan and the International Culture of Catholic Reformation (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2004). On Verhoeven: Paul Arblaster, From Ghent to Aix: How They Brought the News in the Habsburg Netherlands 1550–1700 (Leiden: Brill, 2014). 12 Cf. Djoeke van Netten, ‘Een boek als carrièrevehikel. De zeemansgidsen van Blaeu’, De Zeventiende Eeuw, 27.2 (2011), pp. 214–231. 13 Folke Dahl, Dutch Corantos 1618–1650. A Bibliography. Illustrated with 334 Facsimile Reproductions of Corantos Printed 1618–1625 and an Introductory Essay on 17th Century Stop Press News (The Hague: Koninklijke Bibliotheek, 1946). Helmer Helmers - 9789004277199 Downloaded from Brill.com09/23/2021 05:07:10PM via free access <UN> Cartography, War Correspondence and News Publishing 353 sources as part of heterogeneric politico-religious discourses and debates has mended the fragmented image of the sources, but likewise kept the newsmakers and their lists largely out of view.14 Important questions therefore remain unanswered. What did the early careers of the people that actually made the Dutch Republic into the information capital of early modern Europe look like? What was the role of news within publishers’ wider lists, and how did they market the news? In which networks did they participate? Only once we understand the ways in which individual publishers handled the news and how they responded to the opportunities and demands of local, national and international markets, can we start to compare careers and strategies, both nationally and internationally. It is partly through case studies, then, that we can gain insight into the development of the Dutch news industry in the 1610s and 1620s.

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